Personal Part 2

1. The first thing that i learned about was how Niel Postman thought about the change from verbal to the beginning of the typographic mind. I had always thought that it was just now that things are changing the way life is but since the beginning of time things have been changing and i bet people back then were at the cross roads we are at now.
2. The next thing i learned was about how Cusico talked about the evolution of every thing. He talked about how this is the next evolutionary step that humans have to make just like back at Lake Toba. It makes it a little more comforting to step in to the future.
3. Then you go to Carr who talks about how the advent of the internet is making people stupider than ever. It talks about how people have a shorter attention span and people are having a hard time concentrating on things. I never really thought of this but kids must have been so patient back in the day when all they had to play with was a rock and a stick.
4. The last thing i have taken away from this was everything as a whole has changed my view point on the topic of modern media. It has shown me that change is not a bad thing it just needs to be in braced and used for good and hopefully we can avoid what Carr was taking about.

Personal Part 1

1. My name is Joseph Gaynor, but everyone calls me Joe. I am a Marketing Management major at Champlain College. The biggest reason why i came up here was to be closer to the snowboard industry. This summer i was lucky enough to intern at Rome Snowboards and got to learn about how the industry works. While doing the intern i was put in charge of this project called Shop Profiles. Shop Profiles was to call up shops all over North America to interview them and gather some pictures, it was later posted on their site. I recently have been getting in to video editing again and was able to create this new edit a few days ago, which is posted below this. I also am in charge of the Ski and Ride Club at Champlain College. We have recently created a Twitter and a Blog for the club. I'm new to this whole Blog thing but i think I'm getting a handle of it.

3.I have already been familiar with the four tool set in an earlier class with Dr.W. Since that first class i always have been thinking of them when i watch any TV or see any type of advertisement. It really makes you think about how people are trying to get in your head to sell their goods or services. It helps now tht I'm aware of what they are trying to do so i can try to avoid being sucked in by the media.

4.After reading Feed and my preconceived notions about media, Will media turn out for the better of mankind or make us in to mindless drones.

Part 2 coming soon..

Utah Snowboard edit

Chris and Joes Utah Adventure from Yea Right 22 on Vimeo.

Postman Part 2

1. Discuss THREE specific ways in which Postman explains how the medium of television transforms the epistemological nature of each of the following:

A. Public discourse about religion

B. Public discourse about politics

C. Public discourse about education

2. What specific solutions does Postman offer to improve public communication in our "Peek A Boo" world, and our challenges to communicate in a thoughtful and rational manner in "An Age of Show Business"? In other words, how might we prevent a world in which we are "amusing ourselves to death"?

3. HARD Question: Does Postman's thesis about television still apply to our public discourse in today's Age of the Internet? Please explain your reasoning in 4-5 sentences.


1. A: I think that post man talks about religion very well in chapter 8. He talks about Reverend Terry having big productions that make it look like a TV show and the one story that amazes me is with the 700 club they ad a member reenacts them self seeing the light for change and it was them seeing the 700 club TV show on TV. It shows that it is moving away from giving the message of god to showmanship, as if they are competing with the top TV show at the time.

B: In the beginning of the book Postman talks about how Lincoln and Douglas would talk for hours and days and people would come all over to watch them speak about very important topics. Then later in the book he is talking abut the debate between Ron and Fritz. Their debate was all about looking good for the screen, it had been shortened so that it could fit in a normal show block, and they were using jokes during their speeches. Postman states “Thus, the leader of the free world is chosen by the people in the age of the television.”(pg.97). To me this means that they are dummying down politics and turning in to more of a popularity contest.

C: I think a good example how education is changing in our TV world is the story of Charles Pine. Mr. Pine was awarded professor of the year by the council for the support and advancement of education. He had won this because he copied a skit he saw on the Yankee doodle dandy show. This is surprising that a tv show can help a teacher win an award in teaching. It seems as though education is turning more in to a show to keep your attention like TV then teaching you the facts.

2. Postman talks about a few different things you can do. The first one and I think the most important one is to have media education like this class and other ones on campus. It will allow us to know all the ways TV is trying to persuade you in to its hole. Also another thing which ties in to the first part is to be aware at all time what is being shown to you and know why its being shown to you that way.


3. I think that it might even be more relevant to the Internet than the TV. The Internet is even more things that have no importance to you and your learning but is taking precedence, such as you tube, Twitter, Facebook and many others. These sites are just like peek-a-boo world the present useless information and then most of them have pop ups which is things that have no relevance to you but is trying to sell it to you. It is also talking away from typographic times because people can post things with out even checking them and there is also all this lingo that is made to shorten sentences.

Postman Part 1

Part 1

1. Describe three specific characteristics of the "Typographic Mind."

2. Postman suggests that the twin inventions of 19th century Telegraphy and Photography challenged Typography's monopoly on public discourse. How, specifically did each of these two new media/communications inventions do this?

3. What does Postman mean by "The Peek-A-Boo World," and can you give an example of this world from your own media experiences?

1.The three specific characteristics of typographic mind starts with the attention span of the person receiving it. Back when Douglas and Lincoln did their speeches people would site around for hours on end to hear them speech on the subject. This wasn’t just for this event people would travel far and wide to see their favorite author at their local lecture hall. Since this was all before the time of any other kind of entertainment this was the big thing to do, so people would want to get the most out of it.
The thing that also set this apart from any thing that has come after it was that their speeches were very well thought out. Lincoln and Douglas had their whole speeches planned out and even their rebuttals. This allowed them to be as full with information and still sound good instead of them stumbling around. Another part of this was the fact that the speaker could expect the audience to know a lot about the topic so he could use sophisticated words and get in depth with the topic and know that they would not get lost. This kind of speech does not exist today.
Then lastly Typographic mind was more thought provoking. This was because you don’t have a blogger who could post something in 2 seconds with out thinking about it. In those days their was only books and news papers which took some time to get produced so the writers would make sure that they were as good as they could be and offer the most to the reader. It also was the man form of entertainment and education so everyone was doing so you had to out due the person next to you.

In the Time of Typographic it took a very long time for things to get out and if any thing most of it was local news and things that really were important/ effected the reader. Then when the Telegraph came out you would be able to find out news from across the country and people were wicked excited to see what was going on around them. So it started to slowly filter in to the news and everything around them. This change was not really a good thing because people would start learning/ be more interested in a fire out west than the one that was right down the street. This news from afar was taking over the news that people really need to know. The way I feel it was the start of the dumb down of the news to things we do not need to know. Then Photographs came in to lay and they added to this problem. Soon people would be able to see pictures of distant lands that they never seen or could image seeing. This was a great step forward for the world but I feel like the telegraph it took away more from know the things that were really important.

3. A Peek-a-Boo world means the gathering of information that was not important to people and their community. When reading the book it seemed like he was talking about how people would get a news clip about some kind of event out west and it would be there one min and then it would get replaced by something new that had maybe even lesser importance. This seemed to get started with the telegraph because you would be able to contact people from Maine to Texas and since they didn’t have any thing to tell them to improve their lives they would talk about small talk. Like is stated before I feel like it was the start of what our media is today because it was used in the wrong way. In modern day media I feel like Peel-a-Boo would have to be every news story about some local person in North Dakota who had lost their car or something bad happened to them but is only covered that one time and then the news moves on to something else more important.